As so typical in life, there are life saving properties in locust and yet there are life destroying properties in them as well.

Have you ever felt as if you were being pulled in ten different directions at once, without the slightest idea if any one of those directions was the correct one? Welcome to my life, at times. A place where up is down and good is bad and right…well you know. There are times in my life when I feel as if I am being devoured by locust during their fourteen-year devastation. It is at these times when I eventually feel closer to my Lord than at any other time in my life. After five and a half decades of this process I have come to the belief that, just like Job, all human beings tend to let their relationship with their Creator become lax at times of great prosperity, health and good fortune in life’s matters; and only when we get into troubled waters–i.e., Saint Peter–that we begin to remember some obscure words spoken at some other time in our hearts that slowly pulls us, not only out of this present discomfort, but also out of the fantasy we had been living in just prior to our current hard times.

As I write this page millions of people living on the East Coast of the US are attempting to recover from the first serious earth-quake felt there in over one-hundred years, while at the same time they are being buffeted by a category-three hurricane! Talk about being pulled in too many directions at once! This is all occurring while many of those people are struggling with the rumors, theories and speculations that involve the possible “End of Days” scenario that just add more “fuel to the fire”.

Therefore, after decades of living on majestic mountain tops and dusty valley floors, it has become evident to me that to truly live in a dwelling atop a secure foundation of stone, one must first build that dwelling on the only Rock that can withstand all the movement of earth, sky and humanity. Once that foundation has been firmly established nothing in, on, of, or apart this world can shake that foundation. I may see the earth move, but it does not come near my dwelling!